Table of Contents:
So How do we Taste France?
It’s All About the Sauce.
The Rest of Le Menu.
Culinary Regions of France.
Wines of France. French Beers. French Spirits.
Ahhhh, French Cuisine.
To call anything edible that they make in France merely food seems wrong. It is French Cuisine. It is an experience. With every bite, you can taste France.
Many people believe that all French cuisine is alike. You can go to any French Café and wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.
First, let’s clarify French eating establishments. Is a café the same as a bistro? As the French will tell you, non.
Bistro
These are usually family-run, quaint restaurants that serve traditional fare. Think brasserie menu, with additional braises, stews, and tarts.
Bouchon
You will only find these in Lyon, and you will not see many of them. Each year they must qualify for the title from the local Bouchon L’Association. They are independent, casual dining spots that have nothing to do with Nouvelle cuisine. Ingredients are decadently high-fat items, including pâtés, sausages, offal, and roasts.
Boulangerie
Just a bread shop. Do not think of a bakery at home; bread, and sweets, and pastry. Many of these are bread only. You go to a patisserie for desserts.
Brasserie
“Brewery” in French, so think the French version of a pub. There is beer, wine (it IS France), and pub food in a comfortable, loud setting. Typical brasserie fare includes steak or mussels with a side of frites (fries). Items are usually single items, and the menu is the same all day.
Café
In France, think of this as your coffee house. The main reason to go is caffeine. However, most will have a light menu of snacks, sandwiches, or salad.
Patisserie
It is a bakery specializing in cakes and sweets, but not bread and croissants. Here is where you find desserts, éclairs, macaroons, pastries, and chocolate. With every trip to France, I see more patisseries and boulangeries merging into one storefront. Bittersweet.
Now that we know our brasserie from a hole in the ground, let’s get back to French Cuisine. Lumping it all into one category is about as useful as saying all vehicles are cars.
There is French cuisine by region (Norman, Lorraine) and even some by a city (Nicoise, Lyonnais ).
Then to add additional confusion, ingredients are actual French towns with their local spin of recipes. (Dijon, Châteaubriant, Roquefort-Sur-Soulzon).
So What is French Cuisine?
Before you flee from French fare, let’s break it down, so it’s easier to digest. Every taste France has to offer is a treat. Let’s start.
- French Toast – An English invention from the 15th century to use stale bread. The French are not big on proteins for breakfast.
- Surely French Dressing? – For fun, ask a French person who has come to America to try something named “French Dressing.” The look on their face will be somewhere between surprise and possibly horrifié. A standard salad dressing in France would be olive oil, vinegar, and Dijon mustard. Not sweet. Our idea of french dressing is probably American born and not a taste France would recognize.
- French Fries – Closer, but still not French. They trace back to Belgium in the 1600s. The French call them Pomme Frites.
- French Onion Soup – Yes and no. It dates back to when the Romans were inhabiting Gaul (now France.) Just about every country has its version of a peasant soup using whatever they could find. Often, this was beef bones and onions. The French onion soup we enjoy today evolves from the American “discovery” of French food in the 1960s. In her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and later TV show, The French Chef imports French cuisine. There was more than turkey, mixed vegetables, and a dessert you had to pull back the foil from before baking. We say merci Julia, for helping us taste France.
What about French bread? Now THAT’S French.
- Baguettes you find in every nook and cranny of France. From north to south, they do not differ much. It is a lean dough, made into a long thin loaf. Local ingredients may tweak the flavor, but this is genuinely a national dish.
Chicken
- Poulet-au-Pot (Chicken in the pot) Was it not France’s King Henri IV who said A Chicken in every pot? Well, you better have a recipe for it. This preparation was his favorite dish, and he stated everyone in France should be able to eat this every Sunday. In short, poach chicken slowly with carrots, leeks, and onions.
- Coq au vin – (Rooster in Wine). Start by sautéeing onions, garlic, and butter, brown the meat, and top it off with mushrooms and some bacon. Then drown it in French white wine until the bird is swimming. Then it’s low and slow braising until the meat falls off the bone. According to those in Burgundy, it is their dish as you can ONLY use white Burgundy. We will agree to disagree. This dish is a taste France can boast about proudly.
Beef
- Beef Bourguignon – Not a chicken and white wine fan? Then try this beef and red wine dish. Similar in many ways to Coq au vin, sautéeing vegetables, browning meat, mushrooms, and onions, before braising in red wine. This preparation appears for most cuts of meats in recipes dating back before Burgundy began exporting wines from that region. The adding of Bourguignon was much later. Again, we will agree to disagree on it being a regional dish. It is a taste France makes everywhere. It IS excellent when made with Burgundy wine.
- Pot-au-feu (pot on the fire) is a stew of inexpensive cuts of meat, a bone, root vegetables, and spices. Due to the quality of the protein, it must simmer over the fire all day—a poor man’s Beef Bourguignon.
- Steak au poivre may have originated in the Normandy region in the late 1800s, but by 1900 it was being served from Paris to Monte Carlo. It has as many preparations as regions that claim it.
- Sole Meunière is more a national dish as Sole comes from many different regions. The English Channel in the north, the Atlantic to the west, and even the Mediterranean. Although all from the Sole family, they have considerably different tastes. The term meuniere, (a miller) refers to the flour the Sole is coated with before pan sautéing in butter and finishing with a lemon butter sauce.
- Coquilles St Jacques is similar to Sole as the King Scallop is from the Atlantic, and St. James (Jacques) or Great Mediterranean Scallop is from the sea to the south. Coquille (shell) describes the traditional serving plate. The cooking of the scallop is with just a little heat. Too much and it becomes flavorless rubber.
Dessert
- Souffle (To puff) It appears they were making these first in Paris, but they were soon puffing up all over France.
- Crème Brûlée first appears in print in a 1690s cookbook. England (Trinity Cream) and Spain (crema Catalan) say they invented it, but their recipes vary from that prevalent in France. It has a renaissance in the 1980s.
It’s All About the Sauce.
Is it true the French began using sauces to make food taste better? That is true today, but probably not when they first started. Stealing from their Roman conquerors, they were perhaps adding sauces to cover potentially “off” food in a time before refrigeration.
The foundation of a sauce is the roux. This mix is fat (butter) and flour. It is the thickening agent to a sauce. By thickening the sauce, the liquid sticks to the food. There is a white roux, equal measures of fat, and flour. It is on the heat a short time to take out some of the floury taste. The white roux is more for thickening than flavor.
Blond, brown, or chocolate roux starts as a white (light) roux. The longer you cook it, the darker it becomes. The darker the roux, the richer the flavor. With gravies, the fat from the meat it will accompany replaces the butter.
Additional French Cuisine Flavors.
- Mirepoix – Traditionally, two parts onions, one part carrots, and one part celery. They cook this at a low heat to release the flavors, but not hot enough to brown/caramelize the vegetables. These vegetables are the flavor base for a wide variety of stocks, soups, stews, and sauces.
- Bouquet Garni – This is a selection of herbs and spices either tied together or put in a small sachet. This bouquet then goes into the liquid. This sachet comes out before serving. In many recipes, this would include thyme, bay leaf, and parsley, but there is no set “recipe.”
With the foundation of your sauce, you can build one of the five “mother” sauces.
Béchamel
Starting with a light roux, you whisk it with milk or cream to make a white sauce. That is the base (mother) sauce. What you do with it from here are the “Daughter” sauces. Melt cheese into this hot sauce, and you have an excellent topping for macaroni. Other creations from this base include Mornay (Gruyère cheese), Soubise (onion), Nantua (crayfish), and Mustard Sauce.
Velouté (velvet)
Also, starting with a light roux but replacing the dairy with a clear stock. (chicken, turkey, fish) The resulting sauce takes on the flavor of the liquid. This sauce is a favorite over fish or poultry. “Daughters” from this base include Cardinal (fish), Supreme (cream), Normande (cream, butter, yolks), and Bercy (white wine, shallots, and lemon).
Espagnole (Brown sauce)
This sauce begins with a dark roux. It continues with the addition of a brown beef or veal stock, tomato puree, and browned mirepoix. This sauce is a foundation of boeuf bourguignon and demi-glaze.
Sauce Tomat
This sauce is made by cooking tomatoes down into a thick sauce. In older days, it included roux for thickening. In France, it has pork and vegetables for additional flavor. Daughter sauces include Creole (red gravy), Hot (pepper), Ketchup, Barbeque, and Vodka sauce.
Hollandaise
Instead of thickening with a roux, this one sauce uses an emulsion of egg yolk and melted butter. Hollandaise is a very delicate sauce because the emulsion can easily break. The “daughters” include Béarnaise (shallots and vinegar), Choron (shallots and tomato), Crème Fleurette (crème fraîche), and Mousseline/Chantilly (whipped cream).
Who is not thinking of Eggs Benedict right now? (no, it’s not a taste France gave us. Eggs Bene is probably from NYC.)
The Rest of Le French Cuisine Menu
Many other French dishes are from a specific area or region in France. A FEW of the better known are:
French Cuisine from the East
- Quiche Lorraine – In olden day, the territory of Alsace-Lorraine was the German region of Lothringen. Upon annexation to France in 1871, the French renamed it. They kept the German “kuchen” (quiche), which was a bread dough with an egg and cream custard. They add a lighter crust and cheese, and now we have French Quiche Lorraine. With the addition of onions, you have quiche Alsacienne.
- Escargots de Bourgogne – Burgundy. Now part of the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region, it is famous for its wines and anything prepared in them. The burgundy snail enjoys special protection due to its popularity. The traditional recipe calls for poaching in white wine, lemon, and garlic broth (Court-bouillon.) Follow this by stuffing the shell with finely chopped parsley and garlic butter. After melting the butter in the oven, they hit the table with bread for sopping up any leftover butter.
French Cuisine from the South
- Cuisses de Grenouille (Thighs of the Frog) is most prominent in the Dombes area of southeastern France, where they used to abound. Due to over-harvesting, they no longer harvest in France. The majority now come from Asia and Asia-Minor.
- Cassoulet – There is little argument that this bean soup comes from the Languedoc region of southern France. The outright war comes from whose recipe is THE correct one. Most will agree it is a bean soup in a cassolle (casserole, hence the name). It is/is not a complex stew from the Arabs, the Spanish, or the local townspeople in this area. The only other thing most will agree on is that medium-size haricot beans are essential. And hard water (to help the beans retain their shape during long slow cooking.) No two are alike. Try them all.
- Bouillabaisse – A fish and shellfish stew comes from Nice and the French Riviera.
French Cuisine from the West
- Duck – If it contains anything from a duck (or goose), it is probably from Gascony in the southwest. Duck Confit, Fois Gras, and anything you can fry in duck or goose fat are all staples of this region. And they enjoy a long life expectancy. The French Paradox of low heart disease while enjoying a diet rich in saturated fats.
- Moules mariníères – is from the Vendee, a part of the Pays-de-la-Loire region in western France. Marinieres is preparing mussels with chopped shallots in butter and dousing them with white wine. Other mussel preparations include gratin, stuffed, and in soup, casseroles, and salads.
French Cuisine by Regions.
The French take food just as seriously as they do their wine. And each region protects ITS recipes and presentations as much as their children. However, now a day, you are finding the culinary “borders” blurring. In Paris, you can find just about any dish regardless of where it originates.
For organizational sake, here are other French dishes by region of origin. You should taste French cuisine in each of them.
Auvergne – Rhône-Alpes
- Rhone Alps
Brittany (Bretagne)
Bourgogne – Franche – Comté
Corse (Corsica)
Centre – Val de Loire
Grand Est
- Alsace,
- Champagne,
- Lorraine
Hauts de France
- Nord Pas-de-Calais
- Picardie
Ile de France
- Paris
Nouvelle Aquitaine
- Poitou-Charentes,
- Limousin
Normandie
Occitanie
- Midi-Pyrénées,
- Languedoc
Pays de la Loire
Provence
- Cote d’Azur